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Tuesday, 3 April 2012

Every little helps.

I think that most people who are careful with money and live a fairly frugal lifestyle are aware of how the big boy supermarkets manipulate their prices to fool the public into thinking they are getting a deal, but I have been reading just how low those depths go.
Last month asda had a deal on readybrek, 2 for £3. The actual price of readybrek was £1.50 but at the same time as putting on this offer asda increased the price of readybrek to £2.19. One of their many scams.
It seems the most recent practice is to increase the price and put an offer onto it, just like this, and then at the end of the offer 'roll back' the price to a more expensive one than the original. That way they are increasing the price of the item, but making it look like they have rolled it back.

In a difficult economic time like this, to me, this seems like a very shady practice. If they are putting the price up, just be honest about it and let the customer make an informed choice instead of fooling them into buying something so they think they are getting a deal.

I pick asda out as an example but we all know that Sainsburys and tesco etc do the exact same practice.
Another practice is to subtly change the amount of contents the product holds. Recently red wine vinegar went down in price, but now instead of getting 500ml you get 350 ml, making the over all price much higher.
Have any of you noticed that 4 cans of branded tuna is regularly £6 now, which is outrageous, so people automatically reach for the own brand label which retail at about the £3 something mark. Forgive me if I am mistaken, but didn't branded tuna used to retail at that price? Another ploy to make you buy their own brand at an inflated price.

I do most of my shopping in Aldi or Lidl nowadays, and in a local butchers. I would shop more in local shops, but thanks to the big boys, there is not even a fruit and veg shop anywhere in my town.
How lovely it was to go to Bury market this weekend and talk to market stall owners who could tell you where produce had come from and give good prices.

Lining the pockets of the main supermarkets is not what I want to do with my money. The slogan Every Little Helps should read Every Profit Helps.

8 comments:

I have moved from the suburbs into my local town center and am saving money. Largely on petrol. Before I would go to the supermarket, usually in the car on the way to or from somewhere and spend way more than I needed nearly every day. Now I go to the market several times a week and spend what I need because I have to carry it home.

You are right. Supermarkets do fool us often with their price setting. I will make several trips each Wednesday when I do my shoping. I go to Sainsbury for a few items and to take advantage of their cheap cat letter, then I drive to Aldi to shop for their reasonable fruit and veg, then on to Tesco to do the rest of the shopping. It takes a bit longer but I do save a few quit in the process. I shall also start to visit local Farmers markets again, once a month. I wish there would be such marketsevery week here in the South. But, they only operate it once a month and shut them down from Oct. to March altogether. Weekly markets would be ideal to get all my fruit and veg. We all have to be vigilant of the supermarket scams and find the best way of shopping for ourselves. And you are right that every little bit helps. Every penny I save by shopping around certainly helps me and my pocket.

You should try own brand oats, huge bag for around 74/78p. put them in a bowl with enough milk to cover and bang 'em in the microwave, a couple of minutes, stir, another couple of minuters, and walla ! lovely porridge, eat it out of the bowl to save washing up, add some fruit or juice and a lovely breakfast, cheaper than ready brek, which always reminds me of floor sweepings actually !

"thanks to the big boys, there is not even a fruit and veg shop anywhere in my town"

Yes, and a lot of other towns.I know the super-stores tell us how many they employ, but most of their jobs are part-time to avoid the social responsibilities towards full-time staff, and the better full-time salaried jobs tend to go to non-locals. Their profits go to shareholders and directors.And how many proper businesses have they shut down, local tradesmen who scourced local producta and lived locally, as well as greengrocers, there's milkmen, newsagents, butchers, fishmongers, sweet-shops, etc, etc. Their profit was spent locally.Most High Streets are now devoid of locally-owned businesses, and full of financial institutions, charity shops and national chains, largely due to the likes of Asda, Tesco & Co.

Supermarkets are constantly up to tricks to get as much money out of us as possible, whilst telling us we are getting a good deal. The one I despise the most is the large pack or multi pack that has a higher price per gram then if you bought the small size. I always look at the shelf label and switching between 100g and 1kg price comparisons doesn't fool me. Carry on keeping your eyes peeled for their scams.

Unfortunately ALDI don't really have a vegetarian range so I do have to go to the big four to stock up once a month on certain things but then it's ALDI and more recently, Approved Foods for everything else. My fresh veg & fruit are from ALDI now on a weekly basis.

Put bluntly, it makes me unhappy when I have to hand over my card or cash to a supermarket these days. The Co-Op a little less so but they are expensive so it hurts on a financial front!

Hopefully you can grow a lot of your own stuff soon to ease the supermarket pain.